Titanic: Bandleader Wallace Hartley’s letter to be auctioned, marking anniversary

A letter from the man who led the original band that played on is for sale, according to The Associated Press.

The letter from Wallace Hartley, who survivors said chose to play on as the RMS Titanic sank 100 years ago, will be among 180 relics from the ship put up for auction next month as the world marks the centenary of the Royal Mail Ship’s sinking in the Atlantic.

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"Just a line to say we have got away all right. It's been a bit of a rush but I am just getting a little settled. This is a fine ship & there ought to be plenty of money on her. […] We have a fine band & the boys seem very nice," Hartley, 36, wrote April 10, 1912, five days before the ship sank, in a letter sent during one of two stops before steam ship crossed the Atlantic, according to the AP.

The news agency said the letter was composed on Titanic letterhead.

He closed: "I shall probably arrive home on the Sunday morning," and signed, "With love to all, Wallace."

According to the AP, witnesses recalled seeing the band members swept into the ocean as it the ship sank.

The auction is to be held at RR Auction in New Hampshire.

"I see documents and handwritten letters every day and that one just blows me away," RR Auction Vice President Bobby Livingston was quoted as saying. "It's amazing to have the last letter home from the guy in the band that played on."

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On its website, RR Auction says Wallace was an English violinist and his letter was composed by hand on two 10-by-8-inch sheets of White Star Line watermarked stationery, (“the most desirable of the known on-board watermarks.”)

The auction house writes that Hartley’s body was recovered after several weeks that 1,000 attended his funeral and 40,000 lined the roads taken by the funeral cortege.